Graphics card questions

[ric449]

I have a few questions about graphics cards:

1) I have heard about graphics cards memory buses. Is it true that all SE versions of cards have a 64-bit memory bus while the regular versions have 128-bit buses? And is there any cards that have a wider bus?

2) Is the SE the poor card, pro the better than regular card, and XT better than pro card?

3) How much of a performance increase does a wider memory bus bring?

4) Is the memory bus the connection between the GPU and graphics memory, or is there more to connect to?

5) Does Nvidia use the XT, SE, and pro designations, or do they just use ultra to show it is more powerful than a regular card?

[ric449]

*BUMP* maybe I should post this in general hardware....

[pam123]

The alphabet soup thing can be confusing and is sometimes delibrate ( there is no other reason for NVidia sticking XT at the end of some of it's cards ) but as a rule Ultra is the NVidia designation and Pro or XT is ATI.
Spare yourself grief and go over to ATI's site and check the specs for the cards.
Yes the 9600se has a 64 bit memory bus and the others have 128, that's in the 9600 series only.
The 9700 however, is 256 bit pro or non-pro ( now you can see why I said check ATI's site for specs ).
I've wondered about the memory bus since I've installed a few 9600se cards for kids on really tight budgets. It does a very good job provided you don't enable AA and AF. I was really surprised and I have resolved to stop knocking that card (and there's an 11 yearold of my aquaintence who's been feeling vindicated for weeks now).
I know of no test that specfically test the memory bus. All I can say is that some games, rich textures, high polygon count, and so on will need much more of it than others and you'll see that reflected in the fps for those games, at least you will in the real world.
The shadermark test can tell you something but that's not really what they're measuring. What you want to look for, assuming both cards have the same number of pixel and vertex shaders and are clocked reasonably close to one another, is for one to pull substantially ahead of the other when the resolution goes up. If you want to do a search you can see this happening with the 5800 Ultra ( and given what we now know about NVidia and benchmarks the results were better than the card deserved ) which had 128 bit memory bus vs. the 9700pro's 256 bit memory bus. This despite the fact that the 5800 was clocked higher.
This was how NVidia learned, among other things, that a 128 bit bus wasn't going to do the job for their highend cards. When they rushed out the 5900 the was 256.
Yes the memory bus is the connection between the gpu and the graphics memory.

[ric449]

Wow, answered them all. Thanks a lot pam!